Too Much Stuff Snuffs Out Space

Get Serious!

Worry about global warming if you want, but what's got me bothered is the approaching stuff crisis.

I'm afraid we're acquiring more stuff than we know what to do with.

I see the evidence in my own neighborhood. One of those new rental self-storage places opened out on the highway last year. And just a couple miles down the road, another self-storage place is being built.

Not too many years ago, there were few places like this. Now they're everywhere. Clearly there is a big demand for space where people can put their stuff, a demand that didn't exist in the past.

Where is all this stuff coming from? And why can't people keep their stuff in their houses, the way they used to?

This is especially bewildering, because houses are bigger than ever before.

Every new housing development I see consists of $200,000 houses with double garages and walk-in closets and spacious family rooms and laundry rooms and guest rooms and mother-in-law rooms and no-account-bachelor-uncle-from-Elizabeth-City rooms. And of course also the patio and/or deck. So you'd think people could fit all their stuff in these big houses.

Apparently the growth in stuff is outrunning the growth in housing square footage.

I must confess my own family is not immune to stuff inflation. Lordy, we have stuff.

The only reason I'm not paying rent to the self-storage place is I built two sheds in our back yard to hold our overflow stuff.

I'm not sure where all this stuff came from. Before I was married, I could fit everything I owned into an airline overhead compartment.

Whenever I ask if we can get rid of some of these big mounds of stuff, the rest of my family always answers: "We might need it someday."

True. It also might topple over and crush me someday.

Now I'm at the point where I have to take some of our stuff and store it over at my mother's house. One of these days she'll get back at me and demand to move into our mother-in-law room. Which I will have to build in the back yard next to the storage sheds.

I'll bet you Mother Teresa didn't need a storage shed.

And the stuff people own is only part of the problem. Then there's all the stuff we don't own anymore but which won't go away.

Is it my imagination, or are the antique shops proliferating as rapidly as the self-storage places?

It would be logical. After all, the more time passes, the more past there is, and the past is where antiques come from.

I don't like going into these old-stuff stores, because I always see stuff I got rid of 15 years ago when the rest of my family wasn't looking, only now it's got a price tag that's eight times what it cost new.

"Fifty-five bucks for that `souvenir of Apollo 11' ceramic astronaut decanter with the screw-off space helmet!" I will cry. "I had one just like that."

Then the family says, "We told you you shouldn't have thrown it away."

Maybe that's why people keep so much stuff. They're hoping they'll make a killing in the antiques market in the 21st century.

So my fear is if this keeps up eventually, we'll all have so much stuff we won't be able to move. We'll be stuffed out.

Maybe I can just leave the stuff in the house and get myself a cot in the rental-storage place.

MEET TONY GABRIELE

Say hello to Tony Gabriele at Hampton Bay Days, 2 to 4 p.m. today at the Daily Press booth near the intersection of Kings Way and Queens Way.